Child protective services (CPS) agencies subject a wide scope of families to investigation, and the vast majority do not lead to family separations or family court cases. A 2017 study, for instance, showing that 37% of all children and 53% of Black children are the subject of CPS investigations in their childhoods, has now been cited hundreds of times. Kelley Fong’s new book, Investigating Families, is based on the months she spent embedded with CPS investigators responding to allegations that parents abused or (more often) neglected their children, and the interviews she conducted with both investigators and the parents who were investigated over the course of multiple years (Methodological Appendix, Pp. 213-40). Fong, a sociologist, found staff with largely good intentions thrust into an adversarial posture with families by a system that is astonishingly broad, harms the families it nominally seeks to help, and intertwines social services with social control of poor families.
Fong observes that a large number of CPS investigations involve situations where nobody thinks there is any real risk to child safety, especially not the CPS investigators at the center of the system. One investigator sees a new case as “a nothing burger” (P. 77). Another reflects on the need for schools to communicate better with families and not call CPS (P. 83). Another complains “some of the stuff we get is just ridiculous” (P. 86). Another “wasn’t particularly concerned” about new allegations (P. 133). A CPS administrator complains about the mass of unnecessary reports (Pp. 84-85). Indeed, nationally, CPS agencies “substantiate” (the term for when a CPS agency concludes after investigation that a parent neglected or abused a child) only 17.8% of allegations they respond to.
Facing a CPS investigation and the accompanying concern that the investigation will lead to the agency removing one’s child can scare parents. And many parents reported liking the individual investigators assigned to their cases (Pp. 2, 4, 135). Indeed, some defenders of the status quo cite research showing that “many parents regard their child welfare workers positively.”
Yet Fong demonstrates how those positive views of individual CPS workers do not undo the harms imposed by this unnecessary state intervention. CPS agencies conduct wide-ranging and invasive investigations, even when allegations are quite narrow or resolvable more easily (P. 89), and CPS to “CYA” behavior regardless of the impact on families (P. 95). This “Surveillance to Avoid Liability” (P. 94) imposes real stress, leaving parents “terrified” (P. 1). Parents develop lasting distrust of schools, mental health counselors, and other service providers, because they might report them to CPS (P. 153). Parents, faced with the reality of “parenting in the shadow of the state,” routinely avoid actions which would trigger CPS reports, including avoiding professional services like home visiting programs that might otherwise help them. (Pp. 25, 37.)
Even when CPS agencies help families obtain beneficial services, they create a social-services-delivery structure centered on coercing poor parents. CPS agencies are a “glorified referral service” (P. 198) – they provide few services directly, and instead refer families to service that parents could obtain elsewhere. The only thing CPS agencies add is the threat (stated or unstated) of what might happen if parents refuse to comply. And this power dynamic infuses the system. One reason many professionals report families to CPS is to “discipline parents” (P. 54), especially if the parent did not do what the school or other professional advised (P. 69). Once CPS is involved, the agency demands “acquiescence” from parents who, fearing what CPS might do, acquiesce (Pp. 98-102).
Even when CPS agencies quickly recognize that a parent has not neglected her child, they identify “risk factors” – single-parent status, relative youth, past trauma, and various indicators of poverty – and use them to justify ongoing surveillance of families (Pp. 108-10). That surveillance includes demands CPS make of parents to engage in services “laser-focused on fixing their attitudes and choices,” not providing “direct aid” to parents (P. 139). That is, even nothing-burger reports lead to ongoing state intervention.
Sometimes CPS involvement does lead to a family separation, often from arbitrary state actions. For example, the police arrested one parent for disorderly conduct following a verbal back and forth with a store clerk who insulted her. That arrest led CPS to remove her child and a one-year ordeal to reunify with the child whom she had never hurt in the first instance (P. 165). Such family separations trigger troubling family court intervention: the parents interviewed by Fong were provided counsel who did not challenge removals, pressured parents to comply with agency mandates, did not return parents’ phone calls, and allowed clients to be silenced in court (Pp. 169-79). The legal process “stifled advocacy” that parents might otherwise take for themselves (P. 183). There is no indication that the court process imposed meaningful checks and balances on CPS agencies or meaningful protection to family integrity.
Fong is not a lawyer, but her study makes clear how the law contributes to the problems she describes and how legal change could mitigate the harm. Mandatory reporting statutes funnel many cases to CPS agencies unnecessarily. Fong is careful to note, however, that many reporters claim they would continue to make reports even without a legal mandate (Pp. 53, 54, 63). The reporters’ reactions suggest that narrowing or repealing mandatory reporting laws are necessary but not sufficient to the goal of shrinking the family regulation system’s scope. CPS agencies investigate families as if “there’s no concept of due process” during investigations (P. 109), even if that is legally wrong, as previous Jots have described. Fong’s descriptions of the family court process emphasize the need for well-funded, vigorous, family defense offices to actually empower parents (such offices were not present in the Rhode Island and Connecticut counties where she studied CPS agencies and impacted families).
Fong recognizes that even more dramatic change is indicated. She calls for “Shrink[ing] CPS’s Net” by helping families (especially those with less serious cases) through less intrusive means, and letting CPS agencies focus on more severe cases where intrusive means are needed (P. 201). She argues that legal institutions that funnel families to CPS agencies must reevaluate those actions, financial to families should expand, and more (Pp. 206-11). Fong shows a system that is fundamentally broken and calling out for significant change.
